Strobe Talbott is president of the Brookings Institution, the nation’s oldest think tank devoted to public service through research and education in the social sciences, particularly economics, government, and foreign policy. Talbott became its president in 2002 after a career in journalism, government and academe.

His immediate previous post was founding director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. He also served in the State Department from 1993 to 2001, first as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, then as Deputy Secretary of State for seven years.

Talbott entered government after 21 years with Time magazine. As a reporter, he covered Eastern Europe, the State Department and the White House, then was Washington bureau chief, editor-at-large and foreign affairs columnist. His books include Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb, The Russia Hand, At the Highest Levels (with Michael Beschloss), The Master of the Game, Reagan and Gorbachev (with Michael Mandelbaum), Deadly Gambits, Reagan and the Russians, Endgame, and Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament.

He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, International Security, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Slate.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Talbott was educated at Hotchkiss, Yale (B.A., 1968, M.A. Hon., 1976) and Oxford (M.Litt., 1971). He has honorary doctorates from the Monterrey Institute, Trinity College, Georgetown University and Fairfield University, and he has been awarded state orders by the presidents of Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and the king of Sweden.

The Kruzel Lecture is given at the Mershon Center each year in honor of Joseph J. Kruzel, an Ohio State faculty member in Political Science who served in the U.S. Air Force as well as other posts in the federal government. Kruzel was killed in Sarajevo, Bosnia, while serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs.